Are we seeing Vijay Mallya 2.0?

On August 26, he retweeted twice journalist Barkha Dutt's outbursts at delays on IndiGo flights.

On March 14, Mallya had taken a potshot at Captain GR Gopinath, from whom he had bought Air Deccan, a primary cause of his airline's woes: "Ask [the] media - why no expert reaction fr[o]m Capt Gopinath on [the] railway budget. He has great surface transport experience [for] both passengers and cargo."

Mallya's office did not respond to a request for an interview for this article.

In a way, the low profile that G fears his friend will now have to keep has already begun to take effect.

In late October, Forbes removed the billionaire tag from Mallya's name as his net worth had fallen from $1.1 billion to $800 million, thanks to his troubled airline. Mallya reacted on Twitter on October 25: "Thanks to the Almighty that Forbes has removed me from the so-called billionaires' list."

It would cause, he hoped, less "jealousy, frenzy and wrongful attacks".

For over six months now, his tweets have abstained from highlighting the good life he is so fond of.

On February 6, Mallya had tweeted about his stay at the luxurious Taj Falaknuma Palace hotel in Hyderabad.

On May 4, his Twitter followers learnt that he was dining at Atmosphere on the 123rd floor of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

"Magnificent view," he had tweeted. "[I have] never been so high up in my life."

There were no such tweets after that.

"There was a need to scale down his lifestyle engagements after the [Kingfisher Airlines] crisis," says adman Suhel Seth. "He was seen as clinical about the young men and women he employed."